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George Priest 1930

George Priest 1929/31

In April 2018 we were contacted, via this website, by Lynda Eames whose friend George Priest told her about his father, also George, who played for Northumberland Schools' FA in 1929/30 and also featured in Newcastle Schoolboys win in the ESFA School Shield (the competition for U15 association teams that was generally known as "The Trophy" in days gone by). Newcastle defeated Chesterfield 1-0 in a match played at St James' Park.

She also forwarded some interesting photographs.

George Priest's NFA cap - the tradition of presenting caps has long gone...

However, boys who for play ESFA, as opposed to Northumberland, do still receive a cap.Here are Jack Butler, Jack Cooper and Danny Barlow pictured in 2016 with their caps

This what Lynda told us about George:

In 1931 George played for Newcastle Boys Under 15s against Chesterfield in the English School Shield Final. Newcastle won and this is the only time they have ever won the shield. In the 1931 team playing alongside George were R.Hall and D. Balmer who also played for England Schoolboys.

The photos are of the actual game with the players being introduced to the officials and then with the Shield.

The paper cutting is a cartoon depicting the match that appeared in the local paper featuring Hall and Priest (George).

What later happened is George became a professional and in 1933 signed for Bury Football Club. There is a photo of his contract ...notice the wage?

But sadly due to a bad injury his professional career was cut short. He got married, had two sons, George and Brian, and moved to Surrey.

What is nice is that George Senior's son - that is the George mentioned above - who is now 72, went on to play football for Farnham Town in Surrey. George Senior's other son, Brian, has a son also called George who is now 15 years old and plays football for Haydon Bridge Football Club and Whickham. Football is in the genes.

Sadly George Senior, who died in 1985, never saw his grandson play, as he was born after he had died.

Both teams, Chesterfield and Newcastle, pose for their photograph - with lots of of officials and a sizeable crowd.

Being presented - George is third from the right

Brian Priest has also unearthed some Sunday Sun newspaper cuttings about the match - not perfect images but they do shed extra light!

You can see (if you look carefully) that 25,000 people attended the match at St. James' Park.

And here you can see that the Sun's photographer caught the winning goal...

The Newcastle boys - with their 'back up team'!!Probably Hall and Balmer in the centre - wearing their England caps.

Just the players..

The winning team - with even more officials...

Some of you may remember this type of cartoon that appeared regularly in local papers. Hall and Priest are pictured and the cartoonist also takes a dig at the amount of handshaking that had to happen before the players could actually get on with the game...

And so to George's contract that he signed with Bury FC. I'm sure he was very pleased with his £4 a week (with bonuses thrown in...)

We are very grateful to Lynda and George Junior and Brian for sharing this information.